I have just published a report by three statistics wizards showing, quite convincingly, that the weekly Research 2000 State of the Nation poll we ran the past year and a half was likely bunk.

Since the moment Mark Grebner, Michael Weissman, and Jonathan Weissman approached me, I took their concerns seriously and cooperated fully with their investigation. I also offered to run the results on Daily Kos provided that they 1) fully documented each claim in detail, 2) got that documentation peer reviewed by disinterested third parties, and 3) gave Research 2000 an opportunity to respond. By the end of last week, they had accomplished the first two items on that list. I held publication of the report until today, because I didn't want to partake in a cliche Friday Bad News Dump. This is serious business, and I wasn't going to bury it over a weekend.

We contracted with Research 2000 to conduct polling and to provide us with the results of their surveys. Based on the report of the statisticians, it's clear that we did not get what we paid for. We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don't know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can't trust it. Meanwhile, Research 2000 has refused to offer any explanation. Early in this process, I asked for and they offered to provide us with their raw data for independent analysis -- which could potentially exculpate them. That was two weeks ago, and despite repeated promises to provide us that data, Research 2000 ultimately refused to do so. At one point, they claimed they couldn't deliver them because their computers were down and they had to work out of a Kinkos office. Research 2000 was delivered a copy of the report early Monday morning, and though they quickly responded and promised a full response, once again the authors of the report heard nothing more.

While the investigation didn't look at all of Research 2000 polling conducted for us, fact is I no longer have any confidence in any of it, and neither should anyone else. I ask that all poll tracking sites remove any Research 2000 polls commissioned by us from their databases. I hereby renounce any post we've written based exclusively on Research 2000 polling.

I want to feel stupid for being defrauded, but fact is Research 2000 had a good reputation in political circles. Among its clients the last two years have been KCCI-TV in Iowa, WCAX-TV in Vermont, WISC-TV in Wisconsin, WKYT-TV in Kentucky, Lee Enterprises, the Concord Monitor, The Florida Times-Union, WSBT-TV/WISH-TV/WANE-TV in Indiana, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Bergen Record, and the Reno Gazette-Journal. In fact, just last week, in an email debate about robo-pollsters, I had a senior editor at a top DC-based political publication tell me that he'd "obviously" trust Research 2000 more than any automated pollsters, such as SurveyUSA. I didn't trust Research 2000 more than I trusted SUSA (given their solid track record), but I did trust them. I got burned, and got burned bad.

I can't express enough my gratitude to Mark, Michael, and Jonathan for helping bring this to light. Sure, our friends on the Right will get to take some cheap shots, and they should take advantage of the opportunity. But ultimately, this episode validates the reason why we released the internal numbers from Research 2000 -- and why every media outlet should do the same from their pollster; without full transparency of results, this fraud would not have been uncovered. As difficult as it has been to learn that we were victims of that fraud, our commitment to accuracy and the truth is far more important than shielding ourselves from cheap shots from the Right.

Soon, we'll have a new pollster (or pollsters) to work with, helping us to fulfill our vision of surveying races and issues that are often overlooked by the traditional media and polling outfits. As for Research 2000, the lawyers will soon take over, as Daily Kos will be filing suit within the next day or two.

Perhaps it was just a case of being able to tell them what they wanted to hear but sniping between various poll compiling sites, their rankings and those that pay those pollsters is shedding some serious blood.

First, if you haven't been following along or were unaware, Fivethirtyeight.com has created their newest pollster ratings.

You can read them and draw your own conclusions, my own conclusions about 538.com are that when just working with numbers they do a great job but like most organizations with a slant, they have issues when breaking down into "analysis" and "conclusions." In the case of 538.com the slant reflects Nate Silver's clear leftist bias and it becomes even more pronounced now that one of the sources paying him is the NY Times. As an example his caterwauling and crying before the Mass. Senate election was very interesting to read.

The main problem with his new rankings is the variable he added with regard to whether they belong to an organization committed to transparency. He automatically rewards them on future results and boosts their past performance for no other reason than belonging to something he wants. That right there is pure bias in the numbers and Pollster.com duly notes it. It also notes that whether good or bad, his rankings put all the pollsters within the margin of error, making them basically useless. (That said the aggregation of pollsters tends to under-estimate Republican performance by about 2.5 points but that is still within the margin of error of course.)

Still it is hard to imagine, but not hard to see why this isn't a major news item. Among all the already bad polls this year for Democrats, R2000 was like a ray of hope coming from that blog of hope DailyKos. Now of course, like much of what Obama has promised, the results from that election in terms of outcomes and the polls pointing to the election are pretty much all terrible news.

Utopia hasn't arrived and the polls promising that people haven't noticed or still supported the agenda are made up nonsense. How much worse can it get for that side of the political aisle? Do they even have any more ethical lapses or layers of hypocrisy left to reveal? It really has been amazing to behold.

Still it is hard to imagine, but not hard to see why this isn't a major news item. Among all the already bad polls this year for Democrats, R2000 was like a ray of hope coming from that blog of hope DailyKos. Now of course, like much of what Obama has promised, the results from that election in terms of outcomes and the polls pointing to the election are pretty much all terrible news.

DailyKOS at war with its own polls? Cats living with dogs? R2000 polls were always outrageous; funny that it took Markos this long to figure out what the GOP said all along... welcome to reality libs...

Well the outragous R2000 polls were of course saying what he wanted to hear. According to them, support for Obama wasn't a soft a Gallup and Rasmussen were showing and of course support for Obama's policies was much better.

Just goes to show anyone can fall for that siren song. Of course due to the bias of the liberal media complex, there likely won't be much reporting on this. Newsbusters.org had loads of fun noting the difference in obits between Byrd and Thurmond and Helms. As you can imagine the Thurmond and Helms obits started off pretty much "these redneck, racist motherfuckers are really dead" or something approximating that in more civilized words of course. Some of them even mentioned their opposition to things like the Civil Rights Act in the actual headline for the obit.

Of couese Byrd, who also filibustered the Civil Rights Act, actually belonged to the klan and used the n word in public with a new organization well into the modern media era, he had such things omitted or moved to about the 16-17th paragraph.

The media keeps making it up for the left and no amount of spin or lies can change that. They won't be welcome to reality though, they can't hand reality. In reality Al Gore is an adulterer lying through his teeth to actually help promote the business interests that make him rich. Sadly for society those business interests don't even do anything, just act as middlemen on life itself via carbon trading or selling alarmism to people who want to also promote and get rich from carbon trading. Sad, isn't it?

BTW, just because I'm the type of guy who has a long memory and also the type of guy that loves to watch the leftist memes be revisited and later discredited, I'll note that here we discussed that most infamous of Research 2000 polls.

It was the one that claimed all those wonderful "birther = southern white racist male" articles were generated by a nice Research 2000 poll that claimed it was a majority belief exclusively in the south and exclusively among white Republicans.

It was part of that nice "Republicans are all going to rise up and kill Barack Obama in a giant and violent race war" meme that was floating out there and of course never came to be.

Just like no one ever produced a single video instance of anyone screaming the n word after the health care bill was passed.

BTW, just because I'm the type of guy who has a long memory and also the type of guy that loves to watch the leftist memes be revisited and later discredited, I'll note that here we discussed that most infamous of Research 2000 polls.

It was the one that claimed all those wonderful "birther = southern white racist male" articles were generated by a nice Research 2000 poll that claimed it was a majority belief exclusively in the south and exclusively among white Republicans. It also made lots of other claims as well,

Be Honest. You take other people's polls, compare records for predictions, add in some purely arbitrary (and not transparent) weights, then make your own projections and rankings. But your efforts include more than just statistics. There is some edginess: you don't like numbers when they don't agree with your preconceptions. One night you took a one sentence comment I made to a Boston Herald reporter that my partial poll results showed President Obama with about a "50-50 rating," and you headlined your piece, "The Worst Pollster in the World Strikes Again." Was that due diligence? Did you realize that less than a week later, as is often the case, most other polls were similar to mine?

When Democrats don't like the numbers, then the "edginess" and the name calling appears. It's happening here. It is happening nationally. Calling someone "extremist" or some variation won't alter the numbers.